For some years I had felt there was something wrong. Indeed, though at times earth's ambitions occupied heart and hands, yet there was an aching void – a spot within – which nothing had yet reached. The crisis had come at last. The awful truth had dawned upon me that all my past efforts had been in vain:after all, I was only a poor, helpless, incorrigible sinner. But at the same time a light, glorious as it was sweet, had shined into me. It was the revelation that Jesus had done the work which was necessary to save such a sinner. And what a revelation! What peace it gave! What assurance ! I could almost glory in being a sinner, since I had such a Saviour. If Jesus had made propitiation for my sins I was free. And indeed I was free, and praised God for it from the depths of my soul. Worship was no longer a form, confined to a place or a time,- it was "in spirit and in truth."

But sorrow was soon renewed. The company of God, my Father,- the fellowship of Christ, my Saviour, and Lord,- were the sweetest part of life now. To read the Scriptures, to sing, to pray, to meet with them who enjoyed what I did was a hundredfold more than I had ever found in anything in the world before. But, all of a sudden, while engaged in prayer perhaps, or reading the Scriptures, or other holy exercises, some unholy thought, unbidden and hateful, would pass through my heart. This startled me. The sight of Christ on the cross suffering the judgment of sin had been so vivid that nothing now could shake the assurance of the redemption which was mine through it, but how could I stay close to the God whose Presence I loved, with such unholy thoughts passing through me ? I could not, for I knew His holiness too well to think that He could allow that. If in prayer, I could only leap from my knees and flee, as a poor leper would have done had he suddenly found himself in the Temple of Jerusalem.

What could I do now? Nature perhaps was too well fed and cared for. Starve and subdue it then, and comfort will return. For one whole year that was tried, and with such austerity were its claims repressed that bones once well covered now stuck out. But all was of no effect:the sin was there at the end as at the beginning.

At the time when the case seemed hopeless I was reading the Epistle to the Colossians. Chapter III had been reached, and the first clause of its third verse had arrested my attention. It said "For ye are dead." I answered "O Lord, that I might be dead, and not be distressed any more by the sin that is in me!"

I returned to my verse, and it still said '' For ye are dead."And again I uttered the same prayer to God.

Once more, and with a strange emphasis, the verse said "For ye are dead," And now the sweet light which had broken in a year before broke in afresh. I had thought that to be "dead" was by some special experience:now it broke upon me that it Was a fact. God had put me to death in the death of Christ, and in that death I had died once and forever. So now He could say to me "For ye are dead,"-not ye ought to be, as I had thought. And if I had indeed thus been put to death in and with Christ, then had I also been raised up in and with Christ. So the first verse of my chapter spoke.

As the blessed truth of all this broke upon me, and illumined at once a vast portion of the Scriptures – indeed their great underlying mystery-I could but exclaim, What a fool I have been! Here have I been this long time trying to kill a man who was already dead.

Now I could stay on my knees, keep on peacefully in all intercourse with God despite the consciousness of sin within. That sin is the very nature of the man that God put to death on the cross of Christ – the "old man." The painful experience I had gone through had taught me to hate it, and made me thankful beyond expression at such a deliverance from it. Now, free from that dreadful self, I could "serve in newness of spirit," and "bring forth fruit unto God."